Judge Sides With Jan. 6 Committee Over Obtaining Arizona GOP Leader's Phone Records

A federal judge in Phoenix is enabling the special committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection to obtain the phone records of Arizona Republican Party leader Kelli Ward, despite her attempts to thwart the order. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa rejected Ward’s argument that congressional investigators poring over her phone records infringed upon her First Amendment rights, and that she would suffer irreparable harm in the process, the Associated Press reported. The judge found her “alleged concern speculative” and “dubious.” Ward is a big proponent of the “big lie” that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election. She and her husband signed a document claiming they were Arizona’s true electors even though Biden won the state. Congressional investigators want to see her correspondence from right before the November 2020 election to Jan. 31, 2021. The time period is important because it’s when she convened electors at the state’s party headquarters to vote for Trump and declare themselves Arizona’s “duly elected and qualified” electors, AZ Central notes. Ward also refused to answer the committee’s questions during her subpoenaed testimony last week.